Trusting In God Alone Series

Introduction:

A. The story is told of a frog who went to see a fortune-teller to learn about his future.

1. Gazing into her crystal ball, the fortune teller said to the frog, “You are going to meet a beautiful young woman. From the moment she sets eyes on you she will have an insatiable desire to know all about you. She will be compelled to get close to you—you’ll fascinate her.”

2. Excitedly, the frog asked, “Where will I meet her? At a singles’ club?”

3. “No!” replied the fortune-teller, “You will meet her in a biology class.”

B. Today, countless people seek to know the future.

1. Newspapers and magazines carry horoscope columns.

2. Television networks advertise psychic hotlines.

3. Magazine racks at grocery store checkout counters offer paperback books on astrology, horoscopes, and other occult subjects.

4. The Internet provides a vast array of merchandise for people who are curious about securing information about their fortune and their future.

C. To many, this hype may sound like sheer silliness and may appear to be nothing more than harmless fun.

1. After all, what’s so bad about reading your daily horoscope?

2. But what we need to realize is that this is enemy territory.

3. All this stuff related to fortune telling is anything but silliness and harmless fun.

4. As we will learn from our story today, God is not pleased when His people turn to and trust in anyone or anything other than the living God.

D. So let’s spend some time working through today’s very interesting story from the life of Elijah and see what lessons God would want us to learn about trusting in God alone.

I. The Story

A. As you will recall from our study of the life of Elijah thus far, Elijah was a wanted man.

1. He had once delivered God’s unwelcome message to the king and as the lengthy drought began to take its’ toll, Elijah’s name became a household word across the land of Israel.

2. So, Elijah became famous, but certainly not popular.

3. Everybody, especially the king, wanted to get their hands on him.

4. Elijah’s heroic and successful showdown with the prophets of Baal and Asherah on Mt. Carmel only intensified their desire to eliminate him.

5. God protected Elijah and delivered him from who knows how many traps that had been laid for him.

6. And as we saw in our sermon last week, both Ahab and Jezebel finally went too far, and God finished them off rather swiftly, just as God had predicted through Elijah.

B. This is where we want to pick up the story today.

1. The Bible says: So the king died and was brought to Samaria, and they buried him there. 38 They washed the chariot at a pool in Samaria (where the prostitutes bathed), and the dogs licked up his blood, as the word of the Lord had declared.

40 Ahab rested with his fathers. And Ahaziah his son succeeded him as king.

51 Ahaziah son of Ahab became king of Israel in Samaria in the seventeenth year of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, and he reigned over Israel two years. 52 He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, because he walked in the ways of his father and mother and in the ways of Jeroboam son of Nebat, who caused Israel to sin. 53 He served and worshiped Baal and provoked the Lord, the God of Israel, to anger, just as his father had done. (1 Kgs. 22:37-38, 40, 51-53)

2. So, Ahab died, just as God had predicted.

a. But Ahab’s death did not mean that all was well in the land.

3. Ahab’s son, Ahaziah, most likely his eldest son, succeeded him.

a. As you might imagine, the son of Ahab was just like his father, and so for the two years that he ruled, he “did evil in the sight of the Lord.”

b. Just like his mother and father, he served Baal.

4. We don’t know much else about his reign, but we are told about an accident he had.

C. The Bible says: Now Ahaziah had fallen through the lattice of his upper room in Samaria and injured himself. So he sent messengers, saying to them, “Go and consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron, to see if I will recover from this injury.” (2 Kgs. 1:2)

1. As you can see, the Bible doesn’t give a lot of information about the accident.

2. Perhaps he broke a leg or broke his back or damaged an internal organ in the fall.

3. Maybe he was paralyzed.

4. What is certain is that it was some kind of serious injury or resulted in a serious illness.

5. When the injured king realized he wasn’t recovering, he got worried.